From Page to Screen: The 6 Best & Worst Superhero Costumes

Not every superhero outfit drawn in the pages of a comic book looks great on screen. Some can be replicated exactly from the printed page to movie or TV set and look great with not a hint of cheese to be found – others, not so much.

Should costume designers take liberties when replicating a superhero’s outfit, as they did with Elektra? She would have looked pretty funny (albeit sexy) running around the city wearing just a red bandanna cap and straps covering her womanly parts.

Or should designers stick to replicating a superhero outfit as faithfully as possible to honor the comic book, as they did with Supergirl? Her outfit was almost directly copied from the comic book page – but somehow the end result looked… less than great.

While all of us at Screen Rant worked together to compile this list of superhero outfits we felt were the best and worst to make the leap from page to screen, some of us didn’t entirely agree with every choice. So we created a “Special Mentions” section at the end with the superhero outfits we felt could go either way.

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Cliff2 years ago

I thought Spawn’s costume was good, although the story was lacking. Ghost Rider looks ok, but I never saw the movie. And I liked Kick-ass, but I never read the comic…

I always thought Both of the Ghost Rider movie looks were on par with what the comic book looks so I don’t get why it’s “on the fence”. Regardless of both movies being somewhat bad, they pulled it off well. In fact, the first Ghost Rider movie was almost a perfect comic book copy with the second film’s version a close second. Another suit that was in the “almost good and perfectly made sense category” was the Daredevil suit (even though it was too tight around the collar for Affleck at times, but when it was closed all the way up, the suit rocks!) Affleck’s costume was one of the better “realistic” suits next to the one for Chris Nolan’s first Batsuit. Daredevil’s costume was basically red leather “biker” style armor besides his horned cowl and it made perfect sense! It was simple, and it didn’t look like a movie studio got it’s crazy ass hands on it. You could easily imagine the character ordering a basic set of red leather motorcycle riding gear and altering it enough to become the Daredevil costume. Not like the ones in Spider-Man where you’d have you scratching your head at how a teenager (regardless of how smart) can realistically “create” a Hollywood-rated costume with next to nil budget. The TASM costume had me wondering how the hell his feet sticks to walls in those stupid adidas-styled training shoes.

That’s something that’s always bothered me about all of the Spider-Man movies. They never once explained how he’s able to stick to walls while wearing the suit. In 2002’s “Spider-Man” they showed the little hairs/hooks coming out of his fingers, but that’s all we got. Did the same thing happen with his toes? Did they stick straight through the material of the suit enough for him to stick to things? If so, how? They were almost microscopic and the material for the suit looked thick enough for the little hair things not to be long enough to go all the way through. TASM and the tennis shoe bottoms is a whole other story. Maybe he covered them in used bubble gum?

Placing the Avengers version of the Captain America costume in the “Best” list tells us the author is completely out of touch with reality, and what most people thought of that costume. It looked like someone just walked out of a Comic Con Cosplay party. He looked like a clown, and it actually took me out of the movie on a few occasions.

I thought you might have mentioned the two Mega-City 1 Judge uniforms from Judge Dredd (1995) and Dredd (2012). For all it didn’t get much right, Stallone’s film got pretty close on the feel of MC1 and the uniform. Urban’s getup… I dunno; it still looked to me like an NFL player had forgotten his jersey.

Why were they whining about the X-Men movie costumes?? Based on the title, wasn’t the point how GOOD the outfits could look on the big screen, not how faithful they were to the original source material? I thought most of them looked fantastic! (Iceman as a young student: “when do we get ours?” Wolverine: “they’re on back-order.”) Besides the problems of filming a comic-book character and their costume using flesh-and-blood actors, basic sensibilities and styles have changed drastically since 1963…

Jeremy Iron(Steel, seriously) is a very tall man and buff man in the comics, so O’neil wasn’t a bad choice for the role. As for the weapons inside his hammer, it is actually canon(no pun intended) in some of the comics. Actually his whole armor is supposed to be filled with weapons and gadget, but they downplayed it a lot in the comics so he wouldn’t be too much like another man of iron(this one’s a pun).

I agree!! Really love the Man of Steel’s suit. The only problem for me is: to be able to conceal Superman’s identity in this era, he really needs more than that; Superman needs gloves to hode his fingerprints, and mask with glasses (or at least contact lenses) to make his identity undetectable by any retina or face scanner. If this is not unacceptable, then simply throw away any idea of dual identity! Who wouldn’t believe that? Very unrealistic…..

Juggernaut’s Costume in X-Men: Last Stand. Unequivocally one of the WORST costumes in my opinion. Aside from the obvious lack of thought in casting him, his costume looked much like an old, broken ribbed condom. The movie was wrong on so many accounts, but that was probably the worst costume since that awful Wonder woman re-hash nightmare…

Iron Man’s is awesome of course. Catwoman (Batman Returns) is iconic now. And even though it was a disappointing film, Elektra’s costume in her standalone film was good. Man of Steel costume is a great version as well.

I didn’t see anything wrong with the fantasic 4 outfit or the green lantern outfit, plus the 2013 superman film managed to make a actuall good superman film. other than that the third x man film was horrible no wonder their focusing on wolverine so much now

Not sure why the Fantastic 4 is listed as #5 Worst. Someone explain how you could change the Fab4 and still keep the iconic look? Maybe some wings thrown in or batmanesque armour plates? Please do tell Paul.

@Jones – Fortunately, I don’t have to make the costumes but I also can’t draw and can still tell you what looks good or not. The solid blue unitards looked ridiculous and maybe this is a case where the filmmakers should’ve just changed the concept entirely? Not every spandex-influenced outfit drawn in a comic book looks good when recreated on film.

I totally agree with Spider-man being the first. Particularly the first Spider-man movie by Sam Raimi (I’m not really fond of the Amazing Spider-man costume). I got goose bumps the first time I saw that costume with the raised webs in the teaser trailer.

Aaahhh I’m still waiting to see Sin City in best costumes…. hello? Anyone? Sin City? Easy as they are, perfect as they looked, c’mon people! Am I the only one that realizes how perfect they looked because they had F.Miller’s first-hand opinion? C’mon!

You were right on about the best costumes, but so off on the worst. There are tons worse than the ones you chose! and the fantastic 4 look fantastic! the green lantern, though a little disappointing, wasn’t all that bad. And i liked hawkman’s outfit! Besides when you draw anything is possible, but in the real world there are limitations, and for the limitations we have they did an excellent job!

However I somewhat agree about the X-men costumes. There was so much potential and then to do what they did, so disappointing.

I’ll never agree that Green Lantern’s costume was THAT bad. The movie was not good, and the CG did seem too animated at times. But I loved the plasma/gel quality that mimics the wearers anatomy. Plus the awesome green energy that would course through the layers. Full CG did seem crucial to insure this was a unique uniform, and not made of material, but light. Really cool ideas, sadly just kinda iffy on the execution.

Gotta agree on Wonder Woman, Linda Carter, (showing my age here), was fan -freakin- tastic in her costume, all the boys back in those days watched Wonder Woman, alone, in their rooms, well least I did.

Like to see them do just as good with the next Wonder Woman they make, I’m thinkin they should cast Melissa McCarthy as Diana, be funny to watch at least. nuff said!

this is the worst worst worst blog i have ever read……u suck….u thinkk u can make these suits better……well u only think caus u suck….composers take days n days to make the film better and jerks like u ruins it……once again u suck jerk